The 10 Best & Biggest New PPC Features of the Year

Another crazy year is almost behind us. The year 2016 will be remembered for some huge and unexpected changes, some awesome new PPC features, and welcome changes to both the Google AdWords and Bing Ads platforms.

But some new PPC features stuck out more than the rest this year. This article will separate the unicorns from the donkeys!

When people woke up and discovered they were now living in a world in which desktop search results didn’t have text ads where they were supposed to be, many people freaked out. They predicted that PPC would never be the same again. (Spoiler alert: very little has changed.)

As I pointed out at the time, most paid clicks (about 85 percent) came from the top ads, based on WordStream data for 2,000 accounts:

In a follow-up post by Mark Irvine, The New Google SERP: 3 Changes & 3 Things That Haven’t Changed… Yet, we discovered that paid traffic and CPCs remained consistent after the change, CTRs were up, and impressions were down. Surprisingly, we discovered Position 3 was the biggest winner for advertisers, as CTRs doubled after the change:

Designed for today’s “mobile-first” world, Expanded Text Ads are twice the size of the text ads we’ve known and loved for so long. We now have two 30-character headlines and one 80-character description line.

3. Bing Expanded Text Ads

ETAs on Google and Bing are pretty much identical, with the same character limits and formatting (but fewer truncation issues, thankfully). You can either create ETAs within the Bing Ads platform, or import your existing ETAs from Google AdWords.

Responsive Display Ads: With this new type of ad, you provide a URL, headline, description, and image, and Google creates responsive display ads for you. These ads adapt to the content of the websites they’re on and apps in the GDN.

Better In-Store Conversion Measurement: OK, this feature isn’t new. But it is new to many types of businesses that gained access to this feature for the first time this year. How it works: Google looks at phone location history to figure out whether someone who clicked on your ad ended up walking into the store.

6. Demographic Targeting for Search Campaigns

Google gave advertisers the awesome demographic targeting for search campaigns feature in September.

Now you can see the performance data on how ages and genders within ad groups. Based on this data, you can either create bid adjustments for different demographics or exclude people of a certain age or gender from seeing your paid search ads.

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